New York City's MTA stops use of Twitter saying it is 'no longer reliable'

April 28 (UPI) -- New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority, which serves billions of users a year, is advising the public that it will no longer use Twitter to broadcast transit updates.

The service, which has some 1.3 million followers on the social media platform, announced the decision Thursday, stating "Twitter is no longer reliable for providing the consistent updates riders expect."

"We've loved getting to know you on here, but we don't love not knowing if we can ... communicate with you each day," it tweeted. "So, as of today, we're saying goodbye to it for service alerts and information."

The announcement comes a day after several of the MTA's accounts, including NYCT Bus and NYCT Subway, informed their Twitter followers that they were unable to post service alerts to the social medial platform "due to an API issue."

API, which is short for application programming interface, is software that allows programmers to engage with and create a variety of different resources, including tweets, according to Twitter.

However, the social media platform, under new owner Elon Musk, has decided to charge for API access.

"The MTA does not pay tech platforms to publish service information and has built redundant tools that provide service alerts in real-time," Shanifah Rieara, MTA's acting chief customer officer, said Thursday in a statement explaining the reason behind its decision to end its use of Twitter.

"The MTA has terminated posting service information to Twitter, effective immediately, as the reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed."

The MTA is North America's largest transportation network as it serves some 15.3 million people across a 5,000-square-mile area.

According to city stats, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the MTA serviced some 2.7 billion passengers a year, with an average subway weekday ridership of 6 million.

The MTA is the latest to drop Twitter under new changes made since Musk bought Twitter in October for $44 billion.

Several news organizations, including Canada's CBC and NPR in the United States, stopped posting on the platform after being labeled "state-affiliated media."

Earlier this month, Twitter removed those labels including from Russian state-back news organizations.

Despite the change, nether NPR nor CBC have sent a tweet.